“The teachings of our godly fathers are scorned. What the apostles have handed down is vilified. The inventions of modernizers are fashionable in the churches. Instead of being theologians, men are now fabricators of devious new systems of belief. The glory of the cross has been rejected, and the wisdom of this world wins the top prizes. The shepherds are driven away, and in their place dreadful wolves come in, hounding the sheep of Christ. The houses of prayer stand empty; mourning crowds have retreated into the desert. The older folk weep when they compare the present with the past. The younger folk are to be pitied all the more, for they don’t even know what they’ve lost.”

How descriptive of the church of our time! Someone who recognizes and states so plainly the straits in which the modern church finds herself is surely someone worthy of a hearing! But, if you read this thinking it to be a Keller or a Ferguson or a Trueman, you are mistaken.

It’s Basil of Caesarea… and it was written in the fourth century.

Truly, we have much to learn from our past for the sake of our present… and our future!